Sax and Time
by Angus MacSpon
Summary: Akane's mother is really alive! But a trip to see her may reveal more than anyone expects. And is it really true what they say about leeks?


------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
"Sax and Time" by Angus MacSpon  
  
Based on characters and situations created by Rumiko Takahashi, Naoko  
Takeuchi and others, and used without permission. Comments and criticism  
welcome!  
  
Email: macspon@ihug.co.nz  
Web: http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/fanfic/  
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
  
"What!" Akane stared in shock at her sister. "Mother is alive?"  
  
Her words were echoed a moment later by Kasumi. "It ... it can't be,"  
the oldest Tendo girl stuttered, looking more astonished than her  
siblings had ever seen her. "Are you sure?"  
  
"Quite certain," Nabiki said, looking rather like the cat that had eaten  
the canary. "It seems that Mother didn't really die in that car  
accident a year after Akane was born. Instead, she was kidnapped by  
Mancunian separatists, brainwashed into joining them, and spent six  
months on the front lines fighting against the Scouse junta."  
  
Akane stared at her, open-mouthed. "Wha--"  
  
"Then," Nabiki went on, ignoring her triumphantly, "in mid-battle, she  
was struck on the head and left for dead. A wandering saxophone player  
saved her and nursed her back to health. The blow had given her  
amnesia, so she went with him, and they travelled together for some  
time. He would play the saxophone and she would perform exotic dances  
and pass the hat afterward.  
  
"A few months later, he was unexpectedly gored by a rampaging elephant,  
so she went on alone. But without his sensuous saxophony, she couldn't  
earn as much, and she ended up, penniless, in Norway. There she  
captured the eye of the visiting Maharajah of Gopal, who ..." Nabiki  
frowned at the notepad in her hand. "Well, the next part is pretty  
irrelevant. Anyway, eventually she settled down in Juuban, where she  
remarried, became a doctor, and had a fourth daughter. She's divorced  
now, but she and her daughter still live in Juuban."  
  
"Mancunian separatists?" repeated Akane, dazed.  
  
"Wandering saxophone player?" said Kasumi, a romantic light in her eye.  
  
"Apparently, yes." Nabiki studied her notes again. "Well, I did hear  
another story that she was caught up in a strange beam of light and  
transported to a mysterious world called Gaea. But there's no need to  
get silly."  
  
"Just how did you find all this out, anyway?" Akane asked suspiciously.  
  
Nabiki cleared her throat. "Putting that aside for the moment," she  
said, "our mother is alive and well, and we have a sister we've never  
met. Don't you think we ought to go see them?"  
  
"You have the address, I suppose?" inquired Ranma, who had been  
listening.  
  
Nabiki smirked. "What do you think?"  
  
* * *  
  
"You knew all that stuff before," said Akane angrily, a few hours later,  
"so how come you didn't know that Mother's away on a medical conference  
in Bengal?" It was starting to rain, which did not help.  
  
Irritated, Nabiki kicked a stone and muttered something under her breath  
that sounded a little like "... spy satellites." "Well," she said  
aloud, "at least we should be able to meet our sister. According to my  
information," (she shot Akane a look) "at this hour she should be  
visiting friends at the Hikawa Shrine. Right up here," she added,  
indicating a convenient nearby sign.  
  
The rain was thickening, and they climbed the steps to the shrine  
hastily, Ranma lagging a little behind as she readjusted her clothing.  
Moments later they were being shown into a room where several young  
girls were sitting.  
  
Nabiki looked around the faces quickly, then stepped forward with a  
confident smirk and said to one of them, "Mizuno Ami? My name is --"  
  
"MOTHER!!!"  
  
Without warning the tallest of the girls, a chestnut beauty with her  
hair in a ponytail, hurtled to her feet and launched herself into  
Ranma's arms. She was gabbling, "You'realiveyou'realiveohkamiyou're  
aliveIalwaysknewyouweren'treally ..."  
  
Ranma looked at the girl in her arms, baffled. Then her eyes widened.  
"Wait a minute," she said. "Makoto? Mako-chan? What are you doing  
here?"  
  
"Oh, Mother," murmured the girl, relaxing in Ranma's embrace, and  
presenting a slightly odd picture to the others as she was a good foot  
taller than Ranma. "I'm so glad you're back at last."  
  
Ranma felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Akane, whose battle  
aura was lighting up the room like a carbon-arc lamp. "Er --" she  
began.  
  
"'Mother'?" said Akane simply.  
  
Ranma gave a feeble little laugh. "Um," she said. "That's sort of a  
long story."  
  
* * *  
  
"Let's see. It all began right after that martial-arts takeout race --  
you remember it? I was walking home when I ran into this old man who  
said he was my great-great-great-great-grandson who'd come to teach me  
the secret of Martial Arts Time Travel.  
  
"Anyway, we went up into the mountains to start training, and he --"  
  
"Wait a minute," said Nabiki. "You _believed_ him?"  
  
Ranma blinked at her. "He was my great-great-great-great-grandson. Why  
would he lie to me?"  
  
"Right. Silly question. Go on."  
  
"Well, he taught me this really weird kata, then gave me this special  
soup to drink. He said it'd open my Fourth Eye or something like that  
..."  
  
"A special soup to help you time-travel?" said one of the girls, the  
blonde with the bow in her hair, dubiously.  
  
"Umm, yeah. That does sound a bit funny, now I come to think about it.  
Mind you, he did say there were leeks in it." (At the back of the room,  
another of the girls, with long green-black hair, stiffened.)  
  
"Anyway, I drank it, and the next thing I know, I'm standing in this  
park at night. There's this girl there, and I'm about to ask her where  
I am, when suddenly this strange beam of light shines down on her out of  
nowhere, and she starts to drift up in the air. So I grab her leg and  
pull her down again, and she says thank you, and then these weird guys  
with guns run up and glomp onta her. Well, I'm about to save her again,  
but then the time soup kicks in again and I'm gone.  
  
"This time I find I'm standing on this little, you know, hillock in the  
middle of this real big city, and there's lots of people everywhere  
shouting in English, and suddenly I see this guy right next to me has  
got this gun to his head and he's about to kill himself! So I try to  
grab the gun away from him, but I'm too late, I only jog his arm, and  
the gun goes off and I see this other guy driving past in the back of a  
car jerk, so I figure he got hit in the shoulder or something ... only  
then I vanish from the knoll again, so I never got to check on him.  
  
"Next thing I know, I'm in the middle of this battle, people shooting at  
each other all round me, up ahead somewhere this guy's shouting out  
'Death to the Scouse!' ... and then I see this woman nearby is about to  
get shot, so I knock her down out of the way -- stunned her, I think,  
but it was the only way to save her. Then I'm gone again.  
  
"So next I reappear in this hot, dry countryside, and I'm standing  
looking round, and I say to myself, 'Man, this place could use some  
rain. A _lot_ of rain.' And this old guy in these funny, real  
old-fashioned robes is walking past, and he hears me and says, 'What  
would become of me, then, and my sons and my herds?' And I figure he's  
joking, right, 'cause when did a little rain hurt anyone? So I say,  
'Well, maybe you better build a boat then, big enough for your sons and  
all the animals.' And he gets this funny expression, but then I  
disappear again ..."  
  
Ranma sighed. "Anyway, that's how it went for quite a while --  
wandering around, popping in and out all over the place. Sometimes I  
stayed in the same time for quite a while. After a while I noticed that  
I wasn't aging, either. Maybe the soup did that.  
  
"I did a whole bunch of different things to pass the time -- even  
learned to play the saxophone once, travelled around for a bit as a  
musician, until I had this really bizarre accident. After that I tried  
cattle-herding, archery, architecture, masonry -- all kinds of stuff."  
  
"I suppose you build the pyramids as well?" asked the black-haired girl,  
Rei, sarcastically.  
  
"No, that was Ryoga. I stayed well out of Egypt -- too many cats  
around."  
  
"What was Ryoga doing in ancient Egypt?" asked Akane, startled.  
  
Ranma scratched her head. "You know, that's a good question. I'll have  
to ask him, next time I see him."  
  
"But what about me?" asked Makoto plaintively.  
  
"Oh, right. That was a weird one. I'd been in Scotland for a while --  
I got to be friends with some of the guys there, I invented this game  
where you have to knock little balls into holes in the ground, it's  
harder than you'd think, and they got pretty enthusiastic about it --  
when I popped out and appeared in this bizarre laboratory kind of place.  
There was this crazy little red-haired girl there, she said I was just  
the specimen she'd been looking for, and she caught me in this weird  
mechanical thingummy and started this experiment where she --"  
  
She broke off suddenly and coughed. "Well, anyway. Later on, she said  
she was doing an experiment in cloning. She was mixing whatsits, genes,  
from me and this other boy she knew -- did I mention I was stuck in  
female form at the time? That's a long story too, I can tell you if you  
want ..."  
  
Nabiki waved her hands hastily in an unmistakable 'no.'  
  
"Yeah, whatever. So I escape from this nutcase's lab and run upstairs.  
There's this guy and a whole bunch of girls living there, and they give  
me a room for the night. And when I wake up the crazy red-haired kid  
shows up and says, 'Ta-dah! Finished!' and we see she's managed to  
create this actual _kid_ from the, um, samples she took.  
  
"Well, the guy says that means the kid is really our daughter -- his and  
mine -- so we have to raise her. And --" Ranma cleared her throat,  
looking embarrassed. "Well, I didn't have anywhere else to go. And I  
have to admit, she was cute as hell.  
  
"We named her Makoto. The other girls all helped, but mostly it was me  
and T-- umm, me and this guy who raised her." Ranma looked down at the  
girl in her arms, and smiled. "She grew up just fine, too.  
  
"Then, a few years later, me and the guy are going on a plane trip, and  
Mako-chan has to stay behind, and suddenly in mid-flight we're beamed  
aboard this spaceship and hauled off to another planet and the people  
there tell the guy that it's finally time that he takes over and becomes  
Emperor of the Galaxy or something ... and right then, the soup kicks in  
again and I disappear." She sighed. "That was the last time I saw  
Mako-chan ... until now."  
  
"Oh, please," snapped Akane. "Spaceships and galactic empires? Do you  
really expect us to believe that?"  
  
"Hey, it happened!"  
  
"But why didn't you come back and see me, after you finally got home  
again?" asked Makoto.  
  
Ranma cleared her throat. "Ahh, well, to tell the truth, I kinda got  
the dates mixed up. I didn't think you were going to be born for a few  
years yet." She gave a sheepish grin. "Umm, sorry about that."  
  
There was a slight pause. "So after that," Kasumi said delicately at  
last, "you finally came home?"  
  
"Well, not quite. I was still jumping around at random, you see. I  
ended up on some other planet, I forget the name ... met this young guy  
on the run from a syndicate of some kind. He said he wanted to be a  
bounty hunter. I taught him a little martial arts." Ranma smirked.  
"And then on another planet, I met this street kid who was trying to  
work out what to do with himself. He said he was thinking about the  
military life, but he wasn't sure if it was for him. I told him he  
should do whatever he wanted to do. He seemed kind of pleased by the  
idea.  
  
"And then I was back on Earth, and I met this poor schmuck who was just  
wandering around, and I offered to teach him martial arts too, but he  
said he'd had enough of that for a while, he wanted to try something  
else, so I taught him to play the saxophone. Then the soup kicked in  
again and --"  
  
"We get the idea," said Nabiki heavily. "Tell me, is there anything you  
_didn't_ do?"  
  
Ranma hesitated. "Well, at one point I may have, umm, well, sort of  
created the Universe. Only by mistake, though!" she added hastily. "I  
didn't mean to do it!"  
  
Everybody stared at her.  
  
"I sneezed at the wrong moment. It could happen to anyone!"  
  
The stares did not waver. Ranma scratched the back of her head  
nervously. "Hey, the life of a martial artist is fraught with peril,  
y'know."  
  
Still no answer.  
  
She cleared her throat. "Anyway, about then, the time soup wore off,  
and I reappeared back where I'd started. So I told the old guy thanks  
for the soup, and came on home." Ranma glanced at Akane, whose eyes  
were starting to look glassy, and said hastily, "And right after that  
Happosai showed up for the first time, so I forgot to mention all this  
to you. Er. Sorry."  
  
She waved her hand in front of Akane's eyes. "Hello?"  
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
  
Author's Note:  
  
So ... in a post on the FFML, Allyn Yonge made reference to a pair of  
other fanfics: one in which Ranma was Makoto's mother, and in which Ami  
was Akane's sister. And I misread the message, and thought he was  
jokingly referring to a single (non-existent) story. And by the time  
I'd finished snickering over the idea, this was what had come out. I  
just want you to know ... this is NOT MY FAULT. It's Allyn's. Really.  
  
Series used or referred to: Ranma; Sailor Moon; Tintin; Escaflowne;  
Tenchi; Cowboy Bebop; Irresponsible Captain Tylor; Hitch-Hiker's Guide  
to the Galaxy. Spot them all and win valuable prizes! Maybe. 


End file.
